Afghanistan Gets $122.5 Mil to Combat Gender-Based Violence under Taliban with no Follow Up

Judicial Watch

There is no telling where the hundreds of millions of dollars for gender-based violence have gone, and the feds do not seem terribly concerned about it." . . . 

 "In the latest scandal to rock the Biden administration’s massive Afghanistan aid boondoggle, the U.S. government has been derelict in its duty to measure the effectiveness of a $122.5 million investment to combat gender-based violence (GBV) in the Islamic nation after the Taliban took over, according to a federal audit. The investigation, conducted by the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR), also reveals that the administration failed in this case to follow government practices for monitoring implementation of its foreign assistance award. That includes collecting required progress reports, validating the data in those reports through site visits and other verification means and assessing the periodic performance reports of groups receiving taxpayer dollars to implement programs. Additionally, the State Department, the agency disbursing the cash, did not even “include any goals for preventing and responding to GBV in Afghanistan,” investigators found.

"Since the abrupt 2021 U.S. military withdraw, nearly $3 billion in humanitarian aid has flowed to Afghanistan and a chunk of it has gone to the Taliban, the terrorist group that currently runs the country. Judicial Watch has reported on this extensively, documenting hundreds of millions of dollars in American aid going to the Taliban this year alone. This occurs because the State Department fails to properly vet award recipients to comply with its own counterterrorism partner vetting requirements in Afghanistan and the money has gone to dozens of local entities with potential terrorist ties. The agency has a system to identify whether prospective awardees have a record of ethical business practices and is supposed to conduct a risk assessment to determine if programming funds may benefit terrorists or terrorist-affiliates before distributing American taxpayer dollars. But the State Department does not bother and fails to keep proper records." . . .

While the ICC issues arrest warrants for Israel's Netanyahu, a new film Indicts the Taliban's Murderous Treatment of Women.   Phyllis Chesler

[ICC has] issued warrants for Israel’s Prime Minister Netanyahu, but not for … the Taliban. Something is wrong with this picture.

"I’ve just watched the film Bread and Roses, co-produced by actress Jennifer Lawrence and Nobel Laureate Malala Yousefzai, and directed by Sahra Mani.

"If only American women were half as brave as the on-camera real-life women activists in Kabul! We see them willing to risk being beaten, arrested, tortured, and even murdered by the Taliban because they’ve  dared to demonstrate for “Work, Bread, and Education.”

"Wearing hijab, but naked-faced, identifiable, these heroes march, chant, hold placards aloft, scrawl their demands on walls and even on the snow, meet secretly — and continue to do so even as the Taliban death-threatens, beats, and arrests activist after activist, even after they murder many. The women demand the return of their arrested sisters — and in one instance, they actually prevail.

Strong Women Against the Taliban

"Bread and Roses

 depicts Afghan women who tried to get to the airport on the days before the Taliban stormed into Kabul; they found that all the airport “gates” were closed to them. Thereafter, the women left behind were, essentially, placed under house arrest, forbidden to work, (even if they were doctors and dentists), forbidden to attend school, go out without a male escort and without wearing the Afghan burqa, the garment I view as a sensory deprivation isolation chamber.

"Both schools and beauty shops were shuttered. Music was forbidden. Impoverished families began selling their very young daughters to much older, already married men.  Women were forbidden to take taxis alone.

"Courtesy of body camcorders and hidden cameras, we see these women activists being beaten by the Taliban with whips and sticks." . . .